Confessional culture

If it is still true that art mirrors life, then it was surely only a matter of time before the world's largest arts festival began to reflect society's unwavering fascination with celebrity. 

In 2008, the levies that had held firm for so long were finally broken: the world of celebrity had barged its way into the theatrical domain in much the same way as it had the television, magazine and publishing spheres. 

But this 'celebrification' of theatre was a new beast altogether, taking more inspiration from the like's of Russell Brand's My Bookie Wook than Shakespeare's Hamlet. Celebrities were interested not in reimagining the classics for a new generationin but in exposing their private lives in full voyeuristic detail for anyone who'd listen. The vast majority of pre-Festival press was dedicated to the appearances of US comedian Joan Rivers and former Bond girl and international pin-up Britt Ekland.  The 'celebrity confessional' had arrived.

But why were our washed-up former TV presenters, film-stars and models no longer content with appearing in unremarkable Arthur Miller adaptations? Surprising, the roots of this phenemonen can be traced back to a single, unlikely source.

In 1995, a previously unheard-of American author published an autobiography that would rock the foundations of the English-speaking literary world. Dave Pelzer's A Child Called “It” spawned an entirely new, phenomenally successful genre: originally peddled by publishers as “inspirational literature”, a tag which quickly gave way to the more cynical labels of “misery lit” and “grief porn”. Bookshops across the English-speaking world now maintain a full section dedicated to “tragic life stories”, each chock-full of such unsettling titles as Don’t Tell Mummy or Please, Daddy, No.

But the influence of Pelzer's book spreads far beyond the confines of its genre. It's identified by The Bookseller’s Joel Ricketts as a key influence in the rise of the so-called "bare-all" celebrity autobiography, a literary phenomenon in itself. After decades of bland tomes that largely rehashed inoffensive, uncontroversial information already in the public domain, D-list celebrities had unexpectedly come over all confessional. Suddenly, we were learning the gory details of political affairs (courtesy of Edwina Currie’s diaries), secret battles with bulimia (Prezza by John Prescott) and childhoods spent in foster care (Kerry Katona’s Too Much, Too Young - My Story of Love, Survival and Celebrity). Even the former poet-laureate Andrew Motion’s autobiography In The Blood was heavily indebted to the trailblazing work of Pelzer and his ilk.

While the transition from page to stage was not necessarily a direct one—few celebrity or mis-lit writers have adapted their work for live performance—the meteoric rise of the two genres in the publishing sphere has clearly had an effect. In 2001, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Arts Today programme coined the term ‘confessional theatre’ to describe “the [growing] number of autobiographical works hitting both our mainstream and alternative stages…following on from tell-all autobiographies and even American talk-shows.” Although the confessional theatre label has been used since the 1920s (for example, in reference to a particular style of Weimar German theatre which dealt with societal issues in the aftermath of the First World War), it has only really been deployed in the context of autobiographical theatre since the start of this decade. Indeed, confessional theatre is something of a new breed altogether, representing something closer to a spoken-word autobiographical monologue than the more abstracted, dramatic plays that had come before. 

Moreover, as a genre, its popularity seems to be increasing: the number of confessional productions at the Edinburgh Festival has grown notably over the last few years. But more remarkable still is the manner in which confessional theatre can be neatly divided along the newly established literary lines. For instance, we have the “misery lit” confessionals, such as last year’s British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer, written and performed by Nadira Murray (the partner of the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray) which told her story of abuse, rape and torture in the former Soviet republic. This year, there’s Luck, the 2009 production which follows Megan Riordan and her life as the daughter of a professional Vegas gambler: a show mercifully free of harrowing sexual abuse, but heavy on tales of scamming casinos and life in a gambling family.

Then there’s the ‘celebrity confessional’. Ekland and Rivers, both of whom promised bare-all confessionals, and discussed their lives and loves in candid detail, were in many ways pioneers of the genre as far as the Fringe is concerned, yet they varied in their critical reception. Rivers, whose three-decade career in comedy allowed her effectively to blur the boundary between confessional theatre and stand-up routine, was generally well received; Ekland focused on her many (failed) celebrity relationships but lacked the quality of writing and level of delivery to lay claim to any significant artistic merit. Indeed, one couldn’t shake the sense of a washed-out has-been making a final play for fame, an endeavour that was branded, in this magazine at least, as “a little self-absorbed.”

This year the ‘celebrity’ aspect of confessional theatre is being pushed to ever greater levels of tenuousness, as Edinburgh variously plays host to a former Blue Peter presenter (Peter Duncan’s Daft and Dangerous), a “legendary” British pornographer (An Evening with Ben Dover: Innocent Until Proven Filthy) and the former model Robyn Peterson (Catwalk Confidential). The combination of spurious claims to celebrity and the voyeuristic—perhaps even titillating—revelations promised inevitably raises the question: is this art or something altogether more cynical?

This is a question not so much asked as emphatically answered by critics in the publishing world. While his debut work received a strong critical response, Pelzer is now dogged by accusations of fabrication, exaggeration and appealing to a lowest-common-denominator readership – while a number of other misery lit titles have been revealed as hoaxes. The pressure to create a memoir more harrowing, disturbing and painful than anything so far published raises questions about the morbidly voyeuristic nature of the genre’s fans. Celebrity autobiographies, by contrast, were never accepted into the literary fold in the first place.

So, is confessional theatre (to paraphrase a common publisher’s criticism) written for those who don’t like theatre? Is it a cynical, money-grabbing ploy? Perhaps the desperate clawing for the spotlight of those who’ve lost their fame or notoriety? Certainly, the omens don’t look good.